“At half past eight he checked into Wang Lee’s.”
“Come on, Harry. Wang Lee identified the ambassador as the person who’d checked in.”
“Wang Lee had no grounds to suspect that the dead man on the bed was not the same person who had checked in. All he saw was a farang in a yellow suit hidden behind a pair of sunglasses. And remember the ambassador had a very distracting knife sticking out of his back when Wang Lee had to identify him.”
“Yes, what about the knife?”
“The ambassador was killed with a knife, yes, but long before they came to the motel. A Sami knife, I imagine, since it was greased with reindeer fat. You can buy that kind of knife anywhere in Finnmark, in Norway.”
“But the doctor said the stab wound matched the Shan knife.”
“Well, it would. The Shan knife is longer and broader than the Sami knife, so it’s impossible to see that another knife was used first. Keep up with me now. The murderer came to the hotel with two dead bodies in the boot, asked for a room as far away from reception as possible so that he could reverse the car and carry Molnes the few meters into the room. He also asked not to be disturbed until he said he was ready. In the room he changed again and put the ambassador in the suit. But he was under pressure and messed up. Do you remember I commented that the ambassador was obviously going to meet a woman because his belt was a notch tighter than usual?”
Liz clicked her tongue against her palate. “The murderer didn’t notice the worn notch when he was tightening the belt.”
“An insignificant mistake, nothing that would give him away, but one of the many trivial points that mean this murder does not add up. While Molnes was on the bed he carefully pushed the Shan knife in the old wound before wiping the handle and removing any traces.”
“That also explains why there wasn’t much blood in the motel room. He was killed somewhere else. Why didn’t the doctor notice that?”
“It’s always difficult to say how much a knife wound is going to bleed. It depends on which arteries are severed and how far the blade stops the flow. Nothing is obviously out of the ordinary. At around nine he left the motel with Klipra in the boot and drove to Klipra’s hideaway.”
“He knew where that house was? Then he must have known Klipra.”
“He knew him well.”
A shadow fell over the table, and a man sat down opposite Løken. The balcony was open to the deafening traffic noise outside and the whole room reeked of exhaust fumes.
“Are you ready?” Løken asked.
The giant with the plait looked at him, clearly surprised that he spoke Thai.
“I’m ready,” he answered.
Løken, pallid, smiled. He felt very weary. “So what are you waiting for? Get on with it.”
“When he got to Klipra’s hideaway, he unlocked the door and dumped Klipra in the freezer. Then he washed and hoovered the boot so that we wouldn’t be able to find any traces of the bodies.”
“OK, but how do you know this?”
“Forensics found Ove Klipra’s blood in the freezer and fibers from the boot and from the two dead men’s clothing in the vacuum cleaner.”
“Jesus. So the ambassador wasn’t a neat freak, as you claimed when we examined the car?”
Harry smiled. “I knew the ambassador wasn’t a neat and tidy type when I saw his office.”
“Did I hear you correctly? Did you say you made a mistake?”
“Yes, you did.” Harry raised an index finger. “But Klipra was neat and tidy. Everything in the cabin seemed so clean, so organized, do you remember? There was even a hook in the cupboard to keep the vacuum cleaner in place. But when I opened the cupboard door, it rolled out. As if the person who had used it last didn’t know their way around. That was what made me send the vacuum cleaner bag to Forensics.”
Liz slowly shook her head as Harry carried on.
“When I saw all the meat in the freezer I realized you could easily keep a dead man there for weeks without the body …” Harry puffed out his cheeks and demonstrated with his hands.
“There’s something wrong with you,” Liz said. “You should see a doctor.”
“Do you want to hear the rest or not?”
She did.
“Afterward he drove to the motel, parked the car and entered the room where he put the car key in Molnes’s pocket. Then he vanished into the night without a trace. Literally.”
“Hang on! When we drove to the cabin it took us ninety minutes one way, right? It’s about the same distance from here. Our friend Dim found him at half past eleven, so two and a half hours after you’re saying the murderer left the motel. He couldn’t have possibly made it back to the motel before Molnes’s body was found. Or have you forgotten that?”